


Sceadugenga

by orphan_account



Series: Violetescence [5]
Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Development, Character Study, Dark, Gen, Horror, House of Leaves, House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski - Freeform, Lovecraftian, Mindfuck, Postmodernism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-29
Updated: 2011-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-15 05:44:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a parallel universe, we take a look at an alternate universe Dave, raised by Ms. Lalonde. Here, we see David Lalonde's past, look at some of the factors that have made him who he is; and then he makes a deal for the power to protect his friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sceadugenga

**Author's Note:**

> First, an apology for once _again_ switching from second to third person; at this point I'm just using which ever PoV fits the piece best.
> 
> Second, at this point it's practically House of Leaves crossover fanfic as well as an AU. I have considered cross posting it.

Most of the time, David did not dream at all. When he did, he dreamed in violet, and sometimes he thought he heard a very different kind of singing.

Sometimes, he dreamed he heard a woman's voice.

* * *

“Again, David,” she said from the other room. He could see her, martini glass in one hand, a science journal in the other. She did not even look at him.

He lifted the violin to his chin and began again. Though he will never fully abandon music, the violin will be left behind in a few years (in fact, mailed to a new friend). On the advice of a completely different friend, he will pick up electronic music, pirating a few programs to his laptop and making ambient trance tunes to soothe his sleep.

He never had nightmares, but the dreams of violet always unnerved him for some reason. The music helped, sometimes. Most of the time.

His thoughts were broken by a sigh.

“Enough, then. How about you show me your fencing instead, David?” she asks. He duitifully picks up his saber, child-sized, and works his way through basic moves – swipe, parry

* * *

When he was six years old, he dreamed first of the purple room, though it was hazy, like sleepwalking. He walked to the window and stepped out into the sky, and he heard the song again. This time, he floated upward, higher and higher, into the deep black sky, and then he woke up.

But as time went on, he kept having that same dream, and each time he'd get closer to the sky, closer and closer still, until one day when he was eight years old things went strange and everything was full of colors and he was, at once, surrounded by a thousand little rainbow squid.

“Hello, hello Prince!” they all cooed. “It's so nice to see you, Prince! Sing along, sing along!”

So he clapped his hands and he did at first, but then he noticed one squid all alone, away from the group. She was pale blue and he floated over to her.

“Why are you by yourself?” he asked. She looked at him with sad eyes.

“They all say I'm strange in the head,” she said, sniffling just a little. “It is true, I guess, I'm here and not altogether here, but they need not be mean about it!”

The other Squiddles floated around him and they frown. “Oh no, you mustn't listen to her, they said. “She's quite mad! She'll bite you, you know.”

But he picked her up gently and held her to his chest. “I'll be your friend,” he said, and she smiled, and when he woke he vowed that he was never, ever going to watch that dumb show ever again.

* * *

Most young boys, when they had nightmares, would go and cry to their mothers, would curl in their beds and snuggle tight against them, seeking warmth and companionship. It was not that David did not wish to on the rare nights that he _did_ have nightmares; it was that his mother's room was expressly off limits. He tried to open the door once, but it was locked; it was _always_ locked.

“You shouldn't trouble yourself with the things in there anyway, David,” she cooed to him. He resented that. The cooing. The condescending tone. He was seven years old, he was old enough to see the inside of her room. But apparently not old enough that he shunned the idea of comfort from a nightmare.

That was when she was home, of course. Most of the time, she was not. He could remember only one time she had taken him on a trip, a vague foggy memory of gray skies and rain and great trees that touched the sky, and then the one sunny day, a memory of noise and fire...

Nothing else. He remembers no other time; the next memory being alone and six years old but instructed carefully on what to do, which he did not, breaking quite a few things and nearly killing himself by almost falling off the roof. When she returned, she was all care and smothering love, but some part of him was still bitter. _You left me alone. You left me alone and this happened._

It was not as if she repented. When she was home she'd shower him with endless gifts. He showed the briefest interest in King Arthur and suddenly the house was _covered_ in knight statues. He was certain she was either making fun of him or trying to apologize for her perpetual absence.

* * *

He had dreamed of the squids a few more times, but each time he grew more resentful. The candy-colored world did not suit him at all, and he resented it. At last, in one dream he told them so, angrily telling them that he was done singing, and he said he wished to return to the purple city.

“Oh, that's fine! You should go back and tell them what we sang to you! You are their Prince, after all!”

But as he left the blue one followed in his wake.

“Stop following me.”

“But my dearest, sweetest David, you're the only one who listens to me! The only who believes me... my heart would break if you left! You're my only friend.”

He turned around in anger.

“Maybe if you weren't some damn candy coated squid _thing_ ,” he spat, and immediately regretted it. “I'm... I'm sorry. I misspoke. You are about the only one I like at all...”

But then he was already awake, with no knowledge of if his apology was heard.

* * *

He never went to public school. His mother would sometimes teach him, and sometimes she'd hire tutors, but mostly he was told to learn on his own. At first he resented it, until he realized, after encountering the world through his computer, that it would make him better than anyone else if he were smarter.

He lived in a glass tower, he felt. Not a knight after all, but a prince, a prince high above the world, locked away from the universe, with only a crystal screen to show him the outside.

His only excursions to the outside were first for the violin, at age five, and then the saber, at age six. The violin was swiftly abandoned, and the saber became the only hobby for which he showed a real passion, at least, to his mother (there were things he was passionate about elsewise, but these were secrets, his and his alone). The other children found him distant and strange, they commented on his eyes and his highborn tone, and they especially resented his inhuman speed. He never made a single friend among them, and as he grew older became more biting in his comments about them, lashing out at them with barbed words.

He was alone so often, the whole house his domain, save for that locked room. At first he played by himself, having adventures with the knight toys she bought for him, but eventually that was not enough. He then began to write his adventures down instead, keeping them sequestered and safe in notebooks and on paper, trapped in graphite and ink. He practiced his saber moves against invisible opponents, and would ask his cat what he thought.

One day, the cat answered, and he spent the rest of the day scribbling in a notebook, trying to catch what the cat had said, trying, trying to save some semblance of that dear animal before the memory faded. He passed out, and once again dreamed of that city and when he awoke remembered nothing at all.

He did, however, ask his mother – beg might be a better word – for a quiet, simple funeral. She turned it into a garish debacle and it was then that his heart became set. Before, all his feelings had been contradiction and dichotomy. He wanted her home. He didn't want her home. He wanted to get out and see the world. When he saw it he hated it and wanted to go back inside. He wanted to be a knight. He resented knights. But this act of hers gave him one certain thing: he hated her. He could set his heart against her now, for now he _knew_ that every gesture had been deceitful. She did not love him. If she loved him why was she always leaving? For her _astronomy conferences_? Hah. No.

He steeled his heart against her.

* * *

He dreamed of the city again when he was nine, and again he stepped out of his window and soared to the sky, following a song he could barely hear, something familiar – no, not a song. More like a growl. And then once he reached the point where before there were colors, he found himself instead in his own house.

He wandered through the empty rooms for hours, just looking around, before getting the feeling he was being watched. It was much bigger than he remembered, and the rooms seemed to go on forever, but every so often he'd hear a growl.

He eventually reached a white staircase that seemed infinite, so large he could barely comprehend its size, when he heard a voice.

“Oh, do watch out for the stairs!”

He remembered that voice. He turned around, but instead of the squid he saw a pale little girl, about his age, with long black hair and wide dark eyes, who wore a dress that looked like it was made of paper.

“Who are you?”

She smiled coyly. “You said you didn't like squid. So I changed.”

He stared, not quite understanding at first, and then she sang a little and he laughed in disbelief.

“You... you can change! That's amazing!”

She giggled. “Yes, I can. And I'll change more, too, closer to how I really am. The squids aren't how we are at all; the rest of them say we should seem that way so as not to scare you at all. But I think we should be more honest, don't you agree? Not to mention direct! They all work so obliquely, and I say we should be a bit more forceful.”

“Oh, I agree,” he said. “None of this playing around. That's for kids.”

“Of course! Now, please, let me show you my house...”

* * *

  
When he was just eleven years old he considered himself far too old for frivolous pursuits. He was old, now; a full decade, he must apply himself to literature and make himself smarter than his peers. He began with Tolkien, then moved to Beowulf but still it was not enough to distinguish himself. He moved on to Dante, which was readable, and Milton, which was not; Shakespeare, which was funny, and soon he was reading almost one book a day, devouring, and as he did it became easier and easier to understand.

His mother was more than happy to shower him with books, her brilliant David, though again he knew she was making fun of him because she bought him childish things. Harry Potter (augh), The Dark is Rising (tolerable), and a pile of horrible “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. He, in turn, snuck Pale Fire off her shelf and didn't understand it at all, then tried Infinite Jest and Upon A Winter's Night a Traveler (somewhat better) before finding House of Leaves which was much more tolerable.

He eventually grew so tired of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books that he found himself on a message board, writing ironic reviews gushing with praise, only to find himself inundated with fans taking him seriously. He trolled them as best as an eleven year old could (which, given that he was an eleven year old who had read Shakespeare and Nabakov, was with surprising skill).

At least, until he met the magician girl.

She typed in blue text and something about her was more... he wasn't sure. Clever? Intelligent? Entertaining than the rest? In any case she was different; and either way she convinced him to get Pesterchum, and they had quiet back and forths about how stupid the others on the board were, and confided where their literary tastes were shared; and she introduced him to 'The most rad-cool girl EVER!' who turned out to be completely insufferable but somehow charming, and who taught David all sorts of entertaining new words that sadly elicited little more than a frown and a “that's rather improper” from his mother. And then _she_ introduced him to a strange, _strange_ boy who typed in green text and sometimes seemed completely mad.

He resolved, then and there, that he would _never_ leave them. Any one of them. He'd be there for them always if he needed them. Perhaps even if they didn't know it. If they resented him, he'd be a ghostly presence, a guardian shadow; and if they wished him there in truth, he'd be there. He would protect them, always.

* * *

“Do you like them more than me?” she pouted, kicking her legs over the edge of the infinite staircase. She looked older than him now, but not much, maybe by a year or two. Stranger, too – her eyes had gone all black, and she had the stubs of tiny horns, and her hands had grown quite long. But none of that bothered him at all.

“Oh, no, of course not,” he said, his hand in hers. “I like you just as much, I think. But well, I only see you in my dreams, of course.”

She tightened her grip on his hand, just a little.

“Well, I'll have to find a way to see you outside! Though... they won't like it at all...”

“The others, you mean?”

“Yes, of course. They won't like it at all.”

He pondered this for a while, looking at her in all her strangeness. He liked his new friends, yes, but they all lived so far away – one even on the other side of the world. And in his dreams, the idea made sense, as do all things in dream logic.

“Well, fuck them,” he said at last, using one of those fun new words he learned from Jade. She smiled, her smile a little too wide.

“And that's why we're friends, David. You never play by the rules...”

* * *

He was sent a gift by one of them for his birthday. It made sense to him to use that gift to pass the love along, to make another gift in return. So it is that he began to repair that old bunny of his, first patching with thread and then armoring it with chainmail, carefully working each loop to make a bunny to a knight. A magician, after all, must have a rabbit to put in her hats, and a princess (which she is, he knows, somehow. At least, John said once in one of his strange moods that all of them were princes and princesses) must have a guardian. Since he could not do it, he figured he would send this bunny in his stead.

As he worked, he could feel her presence, almost. Or at least, he imagined he did. It was better than being alone again. Mother was somewhere else (Seattle, this time? Or was she back in Houston? Elsewhere?) and the thought that someone was taking care of him, watching over him; that someone _cared_ that he existed who could actually see him made him feel better. So he imagined. He imagined that just where he couldn't see, just outside his peripheral vision something crouched, something large and terrible and impossible, but utterly his own.

She would be his mother now.

* * *

He assumed it was only a game. When he finds out otherwise, he is not upset in the least. What the hell does he have to lose? Fuck this place. He had a mother who was never home and not a single friend who wasn't now playing the game.

Everything he loves will survive. Everything he hates will burn under the meteors.

He will only later understand the cost, the deal with demons he has wrought.

* * *

In a dead future, he looked up at the skies and at last understood that the dreams had not been dreams and picked out among them the one which he had wanted to hear all along, with a voice like a growl, separate from the rest, her limbs like tree branches.

He didn't tell Jade as he flew up to the sky. He didn't tell her as he reached, _reached_ across that empty space and as a tree root wrapped around his arm and suddenly he was buried in her arms.

She was tall, now, taller than his mother, and nothing about her was human. Her horns curved around her too-long face, her teeth were red needles and her mouth a rift; her skin ivory and traced with patterns that were almost words but more like mazes; her legs black and furred and ending in cloven hooves; and her hands, worst of all, her hands long and thin like smoke, like trendils like ribbons or claws; but here in this dark place in this future that should not be he nestled to her and cried, screaming about the unfairness of it all, asking for some reprieve from the nightmare.

She stroked his hair and whispered that it was alright. She knew a way to end it all, to make it all better.  
He asked her how. And he listened to her plan.

Later, it would occur to him that she might, in fact, be dangerous, given what he had learned from dear Jaspers about her kind, and that she herself was a rebel; but he could not, would not lose. Not now. Not ever.

He had never been one for following the rules.

* * *

He wakes. He resolves. He alchemizes. He recalls her instructions from his dreams. There is but one last thing to do.

He takes his black blade and he walks down through the cavern of crystal and rainbows that used to be the lab, taking with him a pile of blankets from his room. He makes himself a comfortable nest, and lies down in it, armor still on, cape around him, the sword clutched to his chest. It is like a tomb. He figures he is mostly safe here. Jaspers is nearby, and he has told the sprite to guard him while he sleeps.

The sword is still cold in his grip, and his arm is numb while he grasps it. He can hear her song within it, and it is to this sound that he sleeps.

He wakes to sleep, and takes his waking slow.

* * *

This is not Derse.

He dreams of a thousand pitch black corridors, all alike. His breath comes out frost, and he _knows_ this is wrong. They are not supposed to directly interfere with players, not until the dreamself is dead. He is not dead. It is bad enough that they had encountered each other directly before, that she called him while he was a child up to the ring, and they did the best they could, sending him home in a bubble like that, but...

Now he is most assuredly breaking the rules.

He screams to the darkness, asking where she is, and there is no answer. Just endless corridors in darkness. He runs. He runs until his princely shoes are worn through and he bleeds, leaving a red trail in the darkness.

“I NAME you, then! I give you a name, o great _tree_ , gnawer on the roots of creation, weed-woman and witch!”

He takes a deep breath, and speaks again.

“'What miracle is this? This giant tree. / It stands ten thousand feet high / but doesn't reach the ground. Still it stands. / Its roots must hold the sky.'”

“Yggdrasil. We had a deal.”

He is answered with a growl.

He is answered with an acrid smell – sweat and blood, tears and piss, hate and longing and dead trees that claw a winter sky.

He is answered with a touch, fleeting black fingers along his shoulders.

He is answered with a whisper.

“David dear, don't be afraid...”

His breath catches in his throat. He feels his fate here. She is whispering to him and at once they are elsewhere, they are not in that white house from his childhood but outside, in a grove of those winter-starved trees. She looks like one of them, her cloak of shifting paper rustling as she moves, her long black fingers twisting like tentacles, wrapping and unwrapping around and around his arms. He breathes, and he tries to still the thundering of his heart.

“And what is it you seek, David...?”

“... power,” he whispers.

“And for what reason do you seek it?” she purrs, pulling her arms around him and speaking into his hair.

“To save my friends. To protect them,” he says, his eyes hardening. “To win this game or else _break_ it, so none will ever suffer again as we have. ”

His voice grows hoarse as he speaks. He grips her arms tightly; were she human she might have bled.

“I will _end_ those who would _dare_ hurt my friends. ”

He looks up at her, looking into those eyes like empty windows, straight into the abyss.

“Give me this power, mother.”

She kisses him gently, a mother's kiss, soft on his forehead. One clawlike shadow-hand rests on his chest, and he can feel his heartbeat against it.

“For you? Anything.”

 ~~That claw then rips into his ribcage and closes around his heart.~~

 

 ~~There is no blood. No spray of gore, no actual rending of flesh, but he gasps, his eyes going wide as his dream-heart stops, as he starts to scream but already her other claw is at his mouth, turning into some sort of black fog, slipping inside him. He struggles but still more roots and vines are whipping around, binding his limbs and he is cold, so very cold, and he cannot scream no matter how much he wants because there are shadows in his mouth and his heart goes cold because there's shadows in his chest and his own shadow starts to twist and grow, his body wreathing in shadow as lines like text or maybe mazes flow across his own skin, as he goes pale as winter moonlight and she whispers that she'll always be with him, David dear, always with him now, walking in his shadow and walking the earth where her brothers cannot tread for they follow the rules, not like you, David, not like you at all, rulebreaker and way-walker, and now shadow-weaver; for indeed, what is light for but to cast shadows? And she'll be his shadow, she murmurs, she'll be his shadow _always_.~~

 ~~Black tears run from his eyes and he shrieks and convulses and struggles but at last there is no struggle, there is stillness because he can _feel_ inside him something growing. Something dark. Something... greater than himself.~~

 ~~˙ɥsǝlɟ puɐ poolq sıɥ ǝɹɐ ʇɐɥʇ sǝʌɐʍ ǝɥʇ uı dǝǝp sɯıʍs ɹǝɥʇoɯ sıɥ puɐ ;ʇunɐɥ-ǝɹɐɯʇɥƃıu puɐ ɹǝʞlɐʇsɹooɯ 'ʍou ssǝuʞɹɐp uı ɹǝʞlɐʍ ɐ sı ǝH ˙sɐʍ ɹǝʌǝu ǝɥ sdɐɥɹǝԀ ˙ɟlnʍoǝq ʇou sı ǝH~~

* * *

He wakes.

If Jaspers notices, he says nothing, simply purring. Simply happy that his master is awake. He pats the sprite's head, scratches beneath its chin, then stands and walks.

Black shadows twist in his wake.

“What is our first task, mother?”

Burn the book.

“It will be done.”

And through all the windows, he sees only infinity.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Sceadugenga_ is an Old English word meaning, essentially, "one who walks in darkness" or, as it is most commonly parsed, "walker in darkness." It comes originally from Beowulf, where it is used to refer to Grendel and his kin; it is also a phrase commonly encountered in the book  House of Leaves, where it refers to Johnny Truant, his mother, Pelfina, and the character Holloway Roberts.
> 
> The significance of which is a paper all its own.
> 
> This AU was initially inspired by adamantApoplectic's wonderful AU (available here: https://docs.google.com/View?id=dgv9xcjq_190htvp3xd4&pli=1 ), some fanart done of said AU, and roleplay shenanigans on Livejournal.


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